Killers of the Flower Moon: On the Page and On the Screen

I saw Killers of the Flower Moon last fall, when it first arrived in theatres. There’s no question that a 206-minute film makes for a lengthy sit, but I was enthralled by a story I previously knew nothing about. I was fascinated by the realization that a Native American tribe had, thanks to the 1897 discovery of oil on tribal lands, become so fabulously wealthy that by the 1920s some were buying luxury cars, fancy clothing, and jewelry, sending their children to private schools, and traveling to Europe on vacation. It was not uncommon for them to hire white Americans as housekeepers and chauffeurs.

 Inevitably, this accumulation of wealth in Osage County, Oklahoma, attracted grifters and conmen of all sorts. Many were out to corner Osage riches for themselves, and there was a system in place that made this relatively simple. Congress, in its wisdom, had decided that the Osage were too childlike to hold onto their money without help, and so a system of “guardians” was established. Needless to say, the guardians were white men from the community. And suddenly the members of the Osage tribe were dying in great numbers, with whole families wiped out, from causes that were never adequately investigated. The years of the killings (mostly 1921-1926) are remembered by today’s Osage as a “reign of terror,” in which some 60 wealthy Osage mysteriously went to their deaths.

 I bring this up now because I’ve just finished reading the book on which the film is based, David Grann’s 2017 best-seller, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. I was aware from the start that virtually everyone I knew who had read Grann’s book was disappointed by the motion picture adaptation. Upon reading Killers of the Flower Moon, I could see why. Addressing the same historical subject matter contained in Scorsese’s film, Grann arranges it in an entirely different way. He chooses to divide his material into three “chronicles.” The first, “The Married Woman,” focuses on Mollie Burkhart, the Osage woman played memorably in the film by Lily Gladstone. Her mother and three sisters are among those killed off by greedy white men for their oil rights, and she herself barely survives being poisoned by her own Anglo husband (Leonardo Di Caprio), who loves her, but perhaps loves money (and his nefarious uncle. William Hale) more. This material, with its twisted love story, is where Scorsese focuses.

 The second “chronicle,” titled “The Evidence Man,” is devoted to Tom White, a serious-minded Texas lawman who arrives at the FBI at a time when J. Edgar Hoover is transforming it from the so-called Department of Easy Virtue to a serious law enforcement body. This was the era when detectives came into their own, both on the screen and in real life. White as a character has a small role in Scorsese’s movie, nicely played by Jesse Plemons. But the implications of his whole career could support a fascinating film, perhaps a more sophisticated version of The FBI Story (a 1959 James Stewart flick, heavy on heroics, that relied mightily on Hoover’s full cooperation).

 Finally, Grann spends his third “chronicle,” in the first-person, detailing how he himself, as an investigative reporter showing up almost 100 years after the crimes were committed, uncovered new evidence and was able to trace the long-term repercussions of the murders among today’s Native American community. As a reader who’s also a writer, I found it exciting to learn how much evidence a dedicated reporter can find, even decades after the fact. Maybe a documentary is in order?